I thought I'd try to do a quick post today because we've got a busy month ahead of us. Chemo for Jo tomorrow. Friday off to Victoria for a scan, then again on Wednesday for another one. Afterwards 3ish weeks back and forth while Jo gets radiation treatment. Poor girl, she's going to be exhausted.
I thought I may as well try and do this post before we head over the hospital for her visit with her doctor. One book completed in March so far and a few new books to talk about. So, let's go! (Note. I thought I had done a final Feb post but it seems not. I'll include some of my final books of Feb as well.)
Completed Books
(3 books since my last update)
"One author that I've been making a concerted effort to try and read as much as, or at everything, if possible, by is American author Ursula K. Le Guin. She is such a versatile, interesting writher; Sci Fi (the Hainish books), Fantasy (Earthsea), historical fiction, fiction, non-fiction, children's stories & poetry. Not everything I've read has been perfect, but everything has been interesting and thoughtful. So far I've managed to read 25+ of her collection and still have a few more sitting on my book shelf. The other day I received a collection of her poetry, Late in the Day: Poems 2010–2014, my 2nd collection of her poetry.
I do find her poetry quite accessible, a rare thing for me when it gets down to reading and maybe understanding poetry. What made this collection even more interesting was a short essay at the end where Le Guin talked about the act of writing poems, how using certain forms can create the poem itself. She states, "Form follows function,' engineers say. Evidently it can go the other way round. Following form, you find function." She talks about the forms she has used in her poems, generally and specifically as it relates to the poems in this collection. It added to the enjoyment of this collection.
Three particular poems struck me. Before I get into that, I have to say that quite a bit of the poetry deals with inanimate objects, organic objects, animals, but at the same time as you get into different forms, you find historical poems, myths, an interpretation of a Goethe poem. It's all varied and quite interesting.
Now the 3 poems....
1. "The Canada Lynx
We know how to know and how to think,
how to exhibit what is known
to heaven's bright ignorant eyes,
how to be busy and to multiply.
He knows how to walk
into the trees alone not looking back,
so light on his soft feet he does not sink
into the snow. How to leave no track,
no sound, no shadow. How to be gone.
(This was in the free form style... You find that Le Guin has a cadence, a rhythm in her poetry. I imagine all poets do, I just remember her talking about it in another book, Conversations on Writing)
2. In Ashland
Across the creek stood a tall screen
of walnut and honey-locust brand and leaf.
In a soft autumn sunrise without wind
my daughter in meditation on the deck
above the quietly loquacious creek
observed a multitude of small
yellow birds among the many leaves
coming and going quick as quick
into sight and out of sight again.
She said to me, they were
like thoughts moving in a mind,
the little birds among the many leaves."
(I love the picture created and her daughter's wise thoughts on them)
3. "Disremembering
In Alice's wood where things forgot their names
and fawn and child walked together fearless,
a stone might flower, a spring burst into flames,
a heavy human soul go light and careless.
But through the forest of the failing mind
where words decay like leaves, and paths long trodden
are lost, the soul plods onward to no end,
fawns, children, flowers, flames forgotten."
(Made me think of my mother at the end of her life... Poem written in iambic quatrains in alternate rhyme)
Anyway, if you're exploring poetry, please check this out with the added benefit of the prologue about Le Guin's thoughts on poetry. (4.0 stars)"
"I have previously read and enjoyed a couple of thriller writer Thomas Perry Butcher Boy and his Jane Whitefield books. I haven't particularly read them in the correct sequence but it hasn't affected my enjoyment of them, just some events in their personal lives that might have been better in the proper sequence. Dance for the Dead is the 2nd book in the Jane Whitefield series, and yes, I still have to read the 1st book, my bad.
Anyway, this was a pretty darn perfect story, moved along smoothly, had moments of tension where I could feel my heart picking up, my breath quickening. And it was just a darn excellent story. Jane Whitefield is a strong, intelligent character, kind of a minus Tracker. He finds stuff but Jane hides stuff from people who want it, mainly people of course. People who have gotten under someone's skin, or who they might have stolen from, or who might have been abused by their spouses, etc., well, if the find Jane and she agrees, Jane will hide them, give them new lives, make them safe once again.
Jane, in her daily life, is a Seneca Indian, who lives in northern New York, in a small, tidy two story house. She dates a doctor who doesn't know about her other life and is trying to decide how far their relationship should move on.
So, onto Jane's other life. She gets involved in two separate cases that ultimately become entwined. Firstly, trying to protect a young boy and his guardians. The young boy's parents are dead and it turns out that he is set to inherit a fortune, like 10's of millions. Someone wants that money and can get it if the boy disappears. At the start, Jane wants to get him in front of a friendly judge to ensure he is protected. While this does happen, there is a tragedy in the court house, the guardians are murdered and while fighting off the 'bad guys', Jane is arrested.
While in jail she meets Mary Perkins a woman looking for help. Someone is after her for, it comes out gradually, stealing money and hiding it away. Once again, someone wants Mary to show where she hid it.
Jane manages to persuade the judge to protect the young boy, although Jane wants to find out who wants him dead. At the same time Jane takes Mary on a road trip to get her hidden away from whoever is trying to find her.
As Jane continues to investigate, she will discover how close the two cases are intertwined and how dangerous an adversary she's put herself against. I won't go into anymore details about the story, just suffice it to say it's a tense, at times scary, sometimes violent story but just draws you in as you follow Jane in her efforts to protect both people.
I really like Jane as a character. There are intimations of her Indian heritage and it comes into play in this story, including some form of mysticism. But she is a down to earth, thoughtful, tough, capable woman. She moves about her business calmly and effectively and doesn't hesitate to fight back against violence. She's fantastic. And this story is engrossing and fascinating and has an ultimately satisfying ending. Now to read the first book and continue with Jane's life (4.5 stars)"
"Reading a book by Nevil Shute is kind of like watching a great movie on TCM, it draws you in, keeps your interest and leaves you feeling pretty good by the end.... well, except for On the Beach, that doesn't leave you feeling calm... but besides that. Beyond the Black Stump, originally published in 1956 is one such book.
Beyond the Black Stump was written during Shute's Australian phase. Shute took his family there in 1950 and set many of his later novels there, admiring the spirit of the Australian people. This story is set in western Australia in the desolate lands where Australian pioneers run sheep farms. The story follows one particular blended family, the Regans who run a very successful ranch. The focus is on young Mollie Regan who dreams of going to the United States.
Most of the story is set in Australia and we get to know the Regans. In their small community are the two brothers Pat and Tom, both of whom were married to Mollie's mom. The community also has the Judge, who teaches all of the children in the area, white, half caste and aboriginal. The whole family is mixed and it's easier to read the story to sort out the family relationships. Ultimately, it's a homogenous family filled with love and a fair bit of drinking. They have a nearby neighbour running a less successful ranch, a young Englishman, David Cope, who comes for his mail and to spend time with Mollie (David does have a crush on Mollie). His ranch struggles to keep water for his flock and he is in a constant state of struggle.
Into the mix comes Stanford Laird, an oil prospector / engineer. We do meet him before he arrives as he departs Saudi Arabia, heading home on vacation to Hazel, Oregon where his father is a successful entrepreneur. It's a quite, 'frontier' town. Stanford does have a troubled past, an incident that occurred when he was 16. But he's changed his life, become a successful engineer and a teetotaler. He is sent to Australia for his next assignment to see if there is oil on the Regan's property.
There is the meat of your story, the interactions between the American crew and the Regan's and David Cope and it's a beautifully told story. Shute has the ability to tell a story in a way that you just drop into the lives involved. You can picture where the people live, even if it's a strange place for you. What they see as everyday activities are often quite amazing and very different.
Mollie and Stanford will fall in love and he will take her to Hazel and I won't tell you how it ends. The story is the development of a relationship, the portrait of the lives of a fascinating family in Australia's frontier and how they interact with this new situation. I've never been disappointed with a Nevil Shute story. They have a gentleness no matter how amazing things might be. Please check him out. (4.0 stars)"
Currently Reading
(Just those books I've started since my last update)
"Detective Sergeant Petrella of the London police is called in when a woman's partially buried body is found near the reservoir. She has been murdered. She also turns out to be the wife of a criminal who has escaped from prison."
"The apocalypse will be televised!
A man. His ex-girlfriend's cat. A sadistic game show unlike anything in the a dungeon crawl where survival depends on killing your prey in the most entertaining way possible.In a flash, every human-erected construction on Earth - from Buckingham Palace to the tiniest of sheds - collapses in a heap, sinking into the ground. The buildings and all the people inside have all been atomized and transformed into the an 18-level labyrinth filled with traps, monsters, and loot. A dungeon so enormous, it circles the entire globe. Only a few dare venture inside. But once you're in, you can't get out. And what's worse, each level has a time limit. You have but days to find a staircase to the next level down, or it's game over.
In this game, it's not about your strength or your dexterity. It's about your followers, your views. Your clout. It's about building an audience and killing those goblins with style. You can't just survive here. You gotta survive big. You gotta fight with vigor, with excitement. You gotta make them stand up and cheer. And if you do have that "it" factor, you may just find yourself with a following. That's the only way to truly survive in this game - with the help of the loot boxes dropped upon you by the generous benefactors watching from across the galaxy. They call it Dungeon Crawler World. But for Carl, it's anything but a game."
Luz understands what it means to have no choices. Her father is a Boss and he has ruled over her life with the same iron fist. Luz wonders what it might be like to make her own choices. To be free to choose her own destiny."
Didion’s darkly nostalgic debut novel Run River (1963) is set among the ranch families of her native Sacramento Valley, their prosperity and pioneer traditions threatened by suburban sprawl and the changing values of a postwar world. A riveting chronicle of passion, infidelity, and betrayal in the twenty-year marriage of Lily Knight and Everett McClellan, it eloquently evokes one woman’s alienation amid the landscapes of a disappearing California.
A major milestone in the rise of the New Journalism, Slouching Towards Bethlehem (1968) gathers Didion’s kaleidoscopic essays of the mid-1960s: masterpieces whose subjects include an aging John Wayne, a Los Angeles Maoist, the Las Vegas wedding industry, and the acid-tripping counterculture of San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury. The collection showcases Didion’s signature literary persona—“a memorable voice, partly eulogistic, partly despairing, always in control” (Joyce Carol Oates)—while introducing a style of reportage that transformed the expectations of generations of readers and writers.
In Play It As It Lays (1970) model and actress Maria Wyeth, her brief career fading, finds herself adrift in a sun-drenched, air-conditioned, and utterly benumbed world in which pills, fast cars, and casual sex have replaced human connection. The pared-down, impressionistic prose frames a harrowing story of a Hollywood life gone wrong.
Well-meaning norteamericana Charlotte Douglas arrives in the lush, dangerously chaotic Central American republic of Boca Grande, in Didion’s third novel, A Book of Common Prayer (1977), hoping to trace the whereabouts of her daughter Marin, an affluent teenager turned Marxist-revolutionary terrorist. “Immaculate of history, innocent of politics,” Douglas is swept up in intrigues and violence beyond her ability to comprehend, as Didion dissects the menacing realities of imperialism and revolution.
In The White Album (1979) Didion continues her intense, intimate, clear-eyed investigations of a California coming apart at the seams. In trips to shopping malls and to the Getty Museum; visits with Nancy Reagan, The Doors, and the Black Panthers; accounts of the prosecution of the Manson Family—all counterpointed with her own dark moods and obsessions—she offers a brilliant mosaic of a time that continues to shape our own and a monument of superlative literary nonfiction."
